Trouble in the Sahara

As we left Tunis, an old Berber man came up to us and warned us of the dangers of the Saharan Desert. He stated, “Many go in, but few ever can escape the devilish sands and heat of the great desert.” We ignored him because we knew we had Ghassan, the self proclaimed best guide in all of Africa. At first we were going pretty fast, almost 3 miles per hour in fact. We made stops at every oases along the way which were usually about 50 miles in between. However after about 17 days and many miles, our camels started to break down on us. A mysterious illness seemed to be plaguing them causing them to collapse and ultimately die. Only 2 camels managed to survive so we were forced to drop some of the extra clothing we had behind as well as take turns riding the camels. Ghassan even abandoned us and headed back towards Tunis, only giving us simple directions to Taghaza. This slowed down our journey by a ton because of all the excess weight slowing our remaining camels down.